I've recently taken over an MDT project from someone who's left the company. Bar a whirlwind 'training' approach, my knowledge of MDT is limited.The training was pretty much 'click this, do that, slide that, apply that, deploy that - DONE'.

I know how the process works but I've come across an issue and I don't know enough about the system as a whole to diagnose the problem.

Here's what I do know:

1) The MDT system used to work.2) I've changed something and now it doesn't work. I don't know what I've changed in order to revert it and due to other interruptions, can't remember what I could have changed. Whatever it is, I don't think it would have been significant enough to consciously break a working system.3) There are several Task Sequences in the Deployment Share and now, none of them work. I'm guessing it's something at Deployment Share level as a pose to the TS level.4) Under Deployment Share > Windows PE > Custom Background loads when the image boots. Although I've changed this recently but it's not showing the NEW image but the previously specified image. Which leads me to believe that the network credentials in the Deployment Share > Rules section are working as it's getting this far.5) Once the background image loads, it just drops to cmd prompt.6) I'm trying to run the TS deployment in a VM so doubt it's a NIC drivers issue as the custom background loads.7) The log files give me - Return Code = -2147467259 0x80004005 which seems to be a generic 'Something happened' result.

Normally when you see
0x80004005, there was something that happened earlier in the TS that caused it. You'll want to look further into bdd.log (feel free to sanitize it and post here) for more info.

The behavior that you illustrated in point #5 is normally caused by bad network drivers or a dirty deployment environment. Since you're deploying to a VM, I doubt drivers are the issue. Try cleaning the virtual disk with diskpart or create a new one.

In regards to the background image (which may also lead into the other things). Have you rebuilt the boot iso/wim file since making changes. There are somethings (like the background image I believe) that are baked into the boot iso. Because that stuff is needed before the target computer connects into the MDT server. Also any WinPE boot time drivers are needed in the ISO. I'm not in front of an MDT server at the moment, but in MDT you would right click on the deployment share leaf and pick rebuild. This will rebuild the boot image. Also for us the user account for the deployment share in one of the INI config files. If you update the deployment share, sharing permissions you also need to update the service account info in the ini file and rebuild the boot iso images to reflect this change.

If I understood correctly you are testing or running it on VM, did you try to test it with a physical machine? I think it worth to try with default custom.ini and bootstrap. Sometimes changing this two files can cause random issues but make sure you make a copy of these to files. Also don’t forget to update your deployment packages in WDS.

Not sure why I didn't see your bootstrap.ini before, but should the user domain be either an AD domain or the workstation name? If the user account MDTShare is created on your MDT server "MDTDEPLOY" then your UserDomain field should be MDTDEPLOY because that is the device that holds the MDTShare user account. The workgroup "WORKGROUP" doesn't contain any user databases. After you make changes to custom.ini or bootstrap.ini you will need to right click on your deployment share leaf and pick "Update deployment share"menu item and then select the complete rebuild (no the right name) option. To regenerate the entire deployment share and boot image cleanly.

I've recently taken over an MDT project from someone who's left the company. <--- if you think you will handling this long term then I recommend making a new one yourself. Plenty if videos and docs out there for free to learn from the ground up.